by Kage Baker
“We were an item, once,” said Mrs. Smith, looking away into the sea of autumn leaves. “You wouldn’t think I was ever a little girl to be stolen out of a convent by a demon-lover, would you? But we did terrible things together, he and I.”
“What’d he run off for?” asked Smith.
She shook her head.
“He was always afraid of Time,” she said thoughtfully. “It doesn’t get their kind as quickly as it gets us, but it does do for them sooner or later. Seeing me reminded him. One day he won’t be pretty anymore; he can’t bear that, you see.”
Smith stared at her and saw in her face the girl she had been. She turned and looked at the aftermath of battle.
“Bloody hell,” she said. Parradan Smith was staggering toward them, death-pale, supported by Flowering Reed.
“He’s hurt,” Flowering Reed cried.
They made temporary camp by the side of the road and assessed the damage.
Parradan Smith was indeed hurt, had taken a stab wound in the chest, and though it was nowhere near his heart, he was in shock, seemed weakened on his left side. Flowering Reed advised that he shouldn’t be moved for the present, so they made him as comfortable as they could in one of the tents.
Burnbright was bruised and crying hysterically, but had taken no other harm. Smith’s ribs were scratched, and the keymen had taken assorted cuts, none serious. The Smiths and their children were unharmed. Balnshik was unharmed, as was Lord Ermenwyr. There were, however, nine dead bandits to be dragged into a pile and searched, and there was an oak tree to be cleared from the road, to say nothing of 144 giant eggs to be collected and a dozen carts to be righted and put back on track.
“So thanks a lot, Master of the Mountain,” Smith muttered, as he was having his ribs taped up. Mrs. Smith, who was tending to him, shook her head.
“Have you taken a good look at the bodies?” she asked. “Three of ’em are our own people. The others look like half-breeds. Poor Eshbysse had got himself a band of threadbare mercenaries and thieves. When the old man attacks, you’ll know; his people are all demons, and a good deal more professional than these feckless creatures. We’d have had no chance at all against him.”
“That’s encouraging,” growled Smith.
“Would you believe it?” said Lord Ermenwyr brightly, approaching with an armful of violet eggs. “Not one of the damned things broke!”
Mrs. Smith looked scornful. “I suppose all that tripe about the perfect holistic packing shape had some sense in it, then.”
“Are they supposed to be a perfect holistic shape?” Lord Ermenwyr looked intrigued. He tossed his armful into the air and, before Smith had time to yell, began to juggle them adroitly.
“My lord, could I ask you to put those back in the cart?”
Lord Ermenwyr tossed the eggs, one after another as they came out of their spinning circle, into the cart. “Shall I volunteer to search the bodies? Might be a purse or two on them.”
“Do you think they were from the Master of the Mountain?” said Smith.
Lord Ermenwyr gave a short bark of a laugh. “Not likely! His men all wear mail and livery. Or so I’ve heard.”
“Why does everybody know more about this than me?” Smith wondered, as the young lord went off to loot corpses.
“Well, you’re not from around here, are you, dear?” Mrs. Smith tied off his bandage. “If you weren’t from Port Black-rock or wherever it is, you’d have heard these stories all your life.”
Smith was disinclined to tell her whether or not he was from Port Blackrock, so he looked up at Keyman Bellows, who saluted as he approached. “How are we doing?” he inquired.
“Carts are righted, Caravan Master, and no damage to the wheels or gears. Old Smith and New Smith are taking axes to the roadblock now. Parradan Smith’s asking for you.”
“Right,” Smith said, getting to his feet and pulling on his slashed coat. “I’ll go see what he wants. When they’re done with the tree, tell them to dig a grave pit.”
His first thought, when he parted the tent flap and peered inside, was that he was looking at a dead man. But Parradan Smith’s eyes swiveled and met his.
“Talk to you,” he said.
“He shouldn’t talk,” said Flowering Reed, who sat beside him. Parradan Smith bared his teeth at the Yendri.
“Get out,” he said.
“Easy!” Smith ducked his head and stepped in. “You’d better go; I won’t let him wear himself out,” he told Flowering Reed, who looked offended and left without a word.
When they were alone, Parradan Smith gestured awkwardly with one hand at the gang tattoo on his chest. “Know this?” he gasped.
“You’re a Bloodfire,” Smith replied.
He nodded. “Courier. Collected debt in Troon. He tried to get it back.”
“Who did?” Smith leaned closer. Parradan Smith gulped for breath.
“Lord Tinwick. Gambler. His gliders.” He watched Smith’s face closely to see if he understood.
“The gliders were trying to kill you and take back what you’d collected?”
Parradan Smith nodded. He made a groping gesture toward his instrument case. Smith pulled it close for him. He pressed a key into Smith’s hand.
“Open.”
Smith worked the complicated locks and opened it, and caught his breath. Nested in shaped packing was a jeweled cup of exquisite workmanship, clearly very old.
“Heirloom. All he had to pay with. My lord wants it bad. You deliver—” Parradan Smith looked up into Smith’s eyes. “And tell him. Pay well. Lord Kashban Beatbrass. Villa in Salesh. Find him.”
A shadow shifted across the outside of the tent and moved away. Parradan Smith followed it with his eyes and smiled bitterly.
“He stopped listening,” he said.
“Look, you aren’t wounded that badly,” said Smith, feeling he ought to say something encouraging. “I’m sure we can get you to Salesh.”
Parradan Smith looked back at him.
“Turn me,” he ordered.
“What?” said Smith, but he obeyed, lifting and half-turning the wounded man. He caught his breath; there was a red swelling on his back like an insect bite but immense, beginning to blister, and in its center a dark speck.
“See?” said Parradan Smith, breathing very hard. “Poisoned.”
Smith said something profane. He drew his knife and scraped gently, and the black thing came out of the wound. He turned Parradan Smith on his back again and held up the object on his knife blade, squinting at it. It looked like the tip of a thorn, perhaps a quarter of an inch long.
“This is like those darts we took out of the glider,” he said.
“In my back,” said Parradan Smith. Smith groaned.
“Somebody in the party shot you,” he said. “Maybe by accident?”
Parradan Smith looked impatient and drew a deep breath as though he was about to explain something too obvious to Smith; but he never drew another breath after that and lay staring at Smith with blank eyes.
Smith sighed. He closed and locked the case. Flowering Reed approached him as he came out of the tent, and he told him, “He’s dead.”
“He might have lived if you’d listened to me,” said the Yendri angrily.
“I don’t think so,” said Smith, and walked away to put the case in a safe place.
A while later he approached Lord Ermenwyr, who was puffing out rifts of purple weedsmoke as he watched the keymen digging the grave pit.
“We need to talk, my lord,” he said.
“My master needs to rest,” said Balnshik, appearing beside him as from thin air.
“I need to talk to him more than he needs to rest,” said Smith stubbornly. Lord Ermenwyr waved a placatory hand.
“Certainly we’ll talk, and Nursie can stand by with a long knife in case things take an unpleasant turn,” he said. “Though I think we’ve seen the last of this particular band of cutthroats.”
“Let’s hope so, my lord,” said Smith, drawing
him aside. Balnshik followed closely, tossing her hair back in an insolent kind of way. Her shirt had been torn in the fight, giving him a peep at breasts like pale melons, and it was with difficulty that he drew his attention back to her young master. “You fought very well, if I may say so.”
“You may,” said Lord Ermenwyr smugly. “But then, I’ve had lots of experience fighting for my life. Usually against doctors. Today was a welcome change.”
“Your health seems to have improved.”
“I’m no longer rusticating in that damned dust bowl, am I?” Lord Ermenwyr blew a smoke ring. “Bandits or no, the Greenlands does offer fresh air.”
“What were you doing in Troon?” inquired Smith. Balnshik stretched extravagantly, causing one nipple to flash like a dark star through the rent in her shirt. Smith turned his face away and concentrated on Lord Ermenwyr, who replied, “Why, I was about my father’s business. Representing his interests, if you must know, with Old Troon Mills and the other barley barons. Doing a damned good job, too, before the Lung Rot set in.”
“Do you gamble, my lord?”
“Hell, no.” Lord Ermenwyr scowled. “A pastime for morons, unless you’ve got an undetectable way of cheating. I don’t need the money, and I certainly don’t need the thrill of suspense, thank you very much. I’ve spent too much of my life wondering if I’d live to see my next birthday.”
Smith nodded. “And the only reason you left Troon was for your health?”
“Yes.”
“You’d made no new enemies there?”
Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes glinted. “I didn’t say that,” he purred. “Though it wasn’t my fault, really. I made the most amazing discovery.”
“Master,” said Balnshik, in the gentlest voice imaginable, but it was still a warning.
“Did you know,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with barely suppressed glee, “that if you’re very attentive to wealthy widows, they’ll practically pay you to sleep with them? They’ll give you presents! They’ll take you nice places to eat! Good lord, I might have been a kitten on a string, and all I had to do was—”
“I’m sure the Caravan Master isn’t interested, my lord,” said Balnshik, putting an affectionate arm about his neck and locking it against his windpipe.
“How old is he?” Smith asked her.
“Sixteen.”
“Twenty-five!” said Lord Ermenwyr, pushing back her arm. “Really!”
“Sixteen,” Balnshik repeated.
“Seventeen,” Lord Ermenwyr insisted. “Anyway, the only problem is, the ladies get jealous, and they won’t share their toy. There was a Scene. A certain lady tried to do me an injury with her hairbrush. I only got out of it by pretending to have a seizure, and then I told her I was dying, which I am but not right then, and—”
“And his lord father thought it best my master have a change of air,” Balnshik finished for him.
Smith rubbed his chin, scratching the stubble.
“So… would any of these ladies have felt strongly enough to hire a band of mercenaries to ambush you out here?” he said, without much hope.
“Well, I don’t know—Lady Fristia was rather—”
“No,” said Balnshik. “And now, I hope you’ll excuse us? It’s time his lordship had his drugs.” She lifted Lord Ermenwyr bodily, threw him over her shoulder, and carried him off, protesting:
“It could have been Lady Fristia, you know! She was obsessed with me—”
They buried Parradan Smith in a separate grave and piled a cairn of stones to mark it, on Burnbright’s advice, she being the nearest expert on Mount Flame City gang customs. They felt badly leaving him there, in the shadow of the black mountain. Still, there is only so much one can do for the dead without joining them.
Two days more they rolled on, fearful at every blind turning, but the fire-colored forest was silent under a mild blue sky. No picturesque villains jumped out from behind the mossy boles nor arose from the green ferns.
On the third day, Crucible told Smith, “We’ll come to a Red House today. Might want their blacksmith to have a look at that rear axle.”
“Red House, right,” said Smith, nodding. “That would be one of the way station chain? I saw one on the map. Well, that’ll be a relief.”
Crucible laughed like a crow. “You haven’t tasted their beer,” he said.
By afternoon, when the long shadows were slanting behind the oaks, they saw the Red House. It stood on a bluff above the road, in a meadow cleared and stump-dotted, with high windowless walls of red plaster turreted at the four corners where watchmen in pot-helmets leaned. Burnbright announced the caravan’s approach on her trumpet, but they had already seen it from afar. By the time the keymen slowed for the turnout, the great gates were already opening.
Fortified as it was, an effort had been made to give the Red House a welcoming appearance. There was a quaint slated mansard built above the gate, bearing a sign of red glass that was illuminated after hours by lanterns: JOIN US HAPPY TRAVELER, it said. On either gatepost were carved the massive figures of folk heroes Prashkon the Wrestler and Andib the Axman, scowling down in a way that might be hoped to frighten off demons or any other ill-intentioned lurkers without the gates. As if that were not enough, the Housekeeper himself came running forward as the carts rattled in, screaming “Welcome! Welcome to Red House, customers!”
“Thank you,” said Smith cautiously, climbing from his cart and staring around. They were circled in an open courtyard of herringbone brick. To one side a high-vaulted hall stood, with blue smoke curling from its big central chimney. Built into the opposite wall were other long rooms: they might be storerooms and barracks for the watchmen. There was also a forge with a fire blazing, throwing on the dark wall the darker shadow of the blacksmith, who was clanging away lazily at a bit of glowing iron.
“You’d be out of Troon, Caravan Master, am I correct?” asked the Housekeeper, coming up to slap Smith’s arm heartily. He winced.
“That’s right,” he replied. “And it hasn’t been an easy trip. We’ve been attacked twice. No, three times, and lost a passenger.”
“Ah! Demons, was it?” The Housekeeper shuddered. “Horrible, horrible! But you’ll be all right here. We’re a bright speck of safety in a hostile land. Salves for your wounds and cheer for your heart. Everything for the traveler. Smithy, trading post with unique curios, dining hall with fine cuisine, splendid accommodations! Even baths. No shortage of water. You’ll dine with me, I trust?”
“Yes, thank you.” Smith glanced at the caravan, but the keymen were already wheeling the lead cart to the forge, covering the cargo and locking things down with practiced efficiency. “Hot baths for everybody first, though, I guess. Have you got a doctor here? Some of us are wounded, and there’s a Yendri passenger who’s helped out a little, but—”
“As it happens,” said the Housekeeper, lowering his voice, “Our medic is a Yendri. You won’t mind him, I promise you. Splendid fellow, knows his place, expert in all kinds of secret remedies his people use. Eminently trustworthy. Many of them are, you know. We’ve had him here for years. Never a mishap. I’ll send him to you in the bathhouse, shall I?”
The last thing Smith wanted at that moment was to have to deal with another supercilious green person, but his leg hurt badly, so he just nodded, and said, “Great.”
He was sitting in a long stone trough full of hot water, wishing it was deep enough to submerge himself, when the Yendri doctor entered the narrow stall and edged toward him. Like Flowering Reed, he was tall and regal-looking; but he wore a simple white robe and did not seem quite so superior.
“You are the wounded man?” he inquired, setting down a basket.
“It’s mostly me,” said Smith, sitting upright. “But the key-men are more important. They’ve got some bad gashes. In the name of the Unsullied Daughter, will you patch them up?”
The Yendri raised his eyebrows. “For the sake of the Unwearied Mother,” he said, laying a peculiar emphasis on the title, “they have been
tended to. They asked me to see you next. You took a bolt in the leg?”
Smith nodded, raising his leg from the water. The Yendri hissed softly when he saw the bolt wound.
“This is inflamed. Dry yourself and step out to the massage table, please.”
He retreated, and Smith got hastily from the tub and toweled himself off. When he emerged from the stall, he saw that the Yendri had laid out a number of unpleasant-looking tools and bottles.
“You could just slap some salve and a bandage on it,” he suggested uneasily.
“Not if you wish to keep your leg,” the Yendri replied, helping him up on the table. Smith lay back and gritted his teeth, and for the next few minutes thought very hard about a cozy little bar in a seaside town, where from a window table one could watch blue dusk settling on the harbor and the yellow lamps blooming one after another on the ships and along the peaceful quay…
After far too long a time the Yendri was applying a bandage, and telling him, “The cut on your thorax will heal easily, but you’ll have to keep the leg elevated. Can they make a pallet for you on one of the carts?”
“I think so,” said Smith, unclenching his jaw with effort. “It was just a flesh wound. Did you really have to dig like that?”
“It had become—” The Yendri paused in tying off the bandage and looked at him. “Hm. Let me explain it like this: There are tiny demons who feed on wounds. They’re so tiny you can’t see them, but they can get into a cut and make you very, very sick, do you understand?”
Smith thought it sounded like the most idiotic superstition, but he nodded. “Tiny demons. All right. What’s keeping my leg up supposed to do?”
“Well, there are—hm—tiny warriors in your heart, you see? And they’ll do battle with the demons if they can get to them, but if you constrict the—hm—the river of your blood so they can’t row their tiny warships along it—” The Yendri, observing Smith’s expression, threw his hands in the air. “Let’s just say you need to keep off your feet and rest, will that do? And perhaps it won’t scar too badly.”
“I’m too old to care about scars,” said Smith, rubbing his leg.